Unlike in men, there was essentially no association between factor score on the fruit and vegetable factor and subsequent risk of colorectal cancer among women in the cohort (RR = 1.06, 95% CI 0.86–1.30 for Q5 vs. Q1; p trend 0.22 in the multivariate model). On the other hand, we did observe a similar reduction in risk among the women for higher scores on the fatreduced and diet-foods factor, although the magnitude of the association was somewhat less than that found in the men, and it was not statistically significant (RR = 0.87, 95% CI 0.71–1.07 for Q5 vs. Q1; p trend 0.06 in the multivariate model). The red meat and potatoes pattern showed a strong positive association with incident colorectal cancer that was even more pronounced than that observed among the men (RR = 1.48, 95% CI 1.20–1.83 for Q5 vs. Q1; p trend 0.0002 in the multivariate model).